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Today Is Not My Birthday

46 years ago I spilled wet and screaming into this world. I slipped in sudden, unknown, no warning and nothing waiting, flailing in the startling cold. Like a foal I teetered up only to lumber on legs too long and thin, rooting for a mother’s breast so far out of reach, father so long gone.

I’ve been on wobbling, knock-kneed legs ever since, teetering at the slightest bump, skittish at the slightest start, cowering at the slightest threat.

But meat filled the skin around my bones and I stood solid, I stuck my nose against every curious thing, I trampled every threatening thing. I learned to run, to run like hell from every noise and command and all those wires tightly barbed. I found my own strength wrapped in muscles worked long and hard, learned to buck every heavy thing, every back-laden burden, tossing off all trying to break and tame me.

And I ran longer, harder, further til there was only me and a wide open place.

But that enticing expanse was barren, a wilderness void where I stood long bitter and sweltering seasons, one then the other, over and over with nothing to shelter me. I stood out in that wide open place amid gusts and still, torrents and thirst, sleet and burn, all of it pushing me this way and that, bearing down, covering, masking, me melded to landscape.

Those long legs sturdy began to buckle under the weight of it all, weak and wobbly and knock-kneed, starved and emaciated by an infinite expanse I ran right in to, a barren wasteland that hid then claimed me.

* * * * *

This is the day of my birth. And yesterday. And tomorrow. And all my tomorrows to come. These are the days of my birth.

My days began five years ago when living water fell upon me and flowed down and gathered itself into a stream offering: Drink.

And that stream grew wider inviting: Come in.

And that stream began to flow beckoning: This way.

He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

John 1:11-13 NIV

My days began when that water led me out of the wasteland and in to a new earth where it gathered in a great sea so vast and full there are no names for all that resides within, there is not mind enough to comprehend all that lives there. Yet that great sea took me in, flowed all around me, cleansing, reviving, remaking.

Five years ago I came up from that great sea, gasping air and life and was set upon a new ground with new legs. Five years ago I was birthed for the first time, fully alive and fully formed, fully known and fully loved.

And there was a warmth waiting: Mine.

And there was a hand reaching: Here.

And there was a voice leading: Come.

And we walked. We walked right in to all things new.

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

Isaiah 43:19

Five years ago time ended. And then Time began; Time unending, infinite, forever flowing like streams from the wasteland.